Clowning Achievement

When he’s not performing, Slava Polunin looks like an offseason Santa Claus or an aging wizard from a fantasy-movie franchise. Onstage, in his yellow parka, oversized red shoes, giant strawberry nose, and electrified white hair, he is no less fantastical. A versatile performance artist who once organized a street march of 800 mimes in Soviet Russia (Eastern Bloc audiences must have had quite a taste for silent entertainment), Polunin later cut his teeth as Cirque du Soleil’s resident clown. Later still, he created a number of stage spectacles combining his talents as choreographer, comedian, and physical actor, with Slava’s Snowshow arguably the most enduring. The audience will become involved in this family-friendly, wordless phantasmagoria whether they like or not, from the giant spider web that envelops the seats to the streams of confetti raining upon the crowd to Slava’s clown colleagues who perform in the aisles. There is also, as the title suggests, an epic snowstorm created onstage, not to mention a battalion of enormous beach balls and some spectacular theatrics that need to be seen to be believed.
It opens at 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Arsht Center’s Ziff Ballet Opera House (1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami). The show runs 8 p.m. Wednesdays to Saturdays and 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through August 25. Tickets cost $25 to $65. Call 305-949-6722, or visit arshtcenter.org.
July 31-Aug. 25, 2013